Hippocrates Cried. the Decline of American Psychiatry

About this book

• Personal experience from a practicing psychiatrist
• Scholarly data to accompany the personal vignettes

Hippocrates Cried offers an eye-witness account of the decline of American psychiatry by an experienced psychiatrist and researcher. Arguing that patients with mental disorders are no longer receiving the care they need, Dr. Taylor suggest that modern psychiatrists in the U.S. rely too heavily on the DSM, a diagnostic tool that fails to properly diagnose many cases of mental disorder and often neglects important conditions or symptoms. American psychiatry has come to reflect simplistic algorithms forged by pharmaceutical companies, rather than true scientific methodology. Few professionals have a working knowledge of psychopathology outside of what is outlined in the DSM, and more mental health patients are being treated by primary care physicians than ever before.

Dr. Tayler creates a passionate yet scholarly account of this issue. For psychiatrists and researchers, this book is a plea for help. Combining personal vignettes and informative data, it creates a powerful illustration of a medical field in turmoil. For the general reader, Hippocrates Cried will provide a fresh perspective on an issue that rarely receives the attention it requires. This book strips American psychiatry of its modern misconceptions and seeks to save a form of medicine no longer rooted in science.

Readership: Psychiatrists, psychiatric patients, families of psychiatric patients, general readers interested in psychiatry

Table of contents

Introduction
Hippocrates
The Hippocratic Oaths
The Patient Vignettes
Acknowledgements

Chapter 1: The Origins of Indignation
Lesions learned in a teaching hospital
Dogma derails data
The US navy as a model for neuropsychiatry
Decision

Chapter 2: First do no Harm
The deadly mind-body dichotomy
Conversion disorder, a classic psychiatric pejorative
The decline of psychiatric care in the USA

Chapter 3: Free of Injustice and Mischief
Models of psychiatric disorder
Mischief emerges
The injustice of a corrupting influence
Shell games

Chapter 4: For the benefit of the Sick
Beneficence: the fundamental imperative of medicine
Clinical diagnosis requires disciplined curiosity
Electroconvulsive therapy and beneficence
The most dangerous of doctors

Chapter 5: Peeves
Moral short-comings
Community psychiatry's overreach
Child psychiatrists
Anti-psychiatry groups and state legislatures
The rapacious health insurance industry and their minions
Academic psychiatrists
Myths

Chapter 6: Survival of the Fit
A rudderless ship
A specialty offering nothing special
Reduced habitat
Little advantage at a higher cost
The Process of extinction

Chapter 7: Back to the Future: The Once and Future King
A brainless diagnostic system
An alternative diagnostic approach
A neuropsychiatrist defined
The principles of neuropsychiatry
The biopsychosocial regression
Neuropsychiatry marginalized
Back to the future
Chapter End Notes
Reference List